from the gone-political dept

We've discussed a few times the big NY Times article on Facebook employing smear merchants against its critics, discussing how disappointing, if common this tactic is, and also talking about how it's a sign of a company losing its way. This has become even more pronounced as, following Facebook COO's Sheryl Sandberg's original denial of knowledge specifically around the question of smears directed at George Soros, it's now been revealed that she both was cc'd on some of the emails from the PR company, and that she had directly asked for research on Soros' views on Facebook.

But I wanted to dig in a bit more on a specific point mentioned briefly in that NY Times report, concerning FOSTA. As we've detailed for many, many months FOSTA was a disastrous bill that has made sex trafficking worse while simultaneously creating huge problems for free speech and for internet companies -- including Facebook, which has already been sued under FOSTA.

What was notable, was that FOSTA was not going to move forward... until Facebook suddenly changed its position on the bill. Specifically, Sandberg suddenly became a vocal supporter of the bill, even as multiple policy experts at her own company had worked hard to stop the bill. At the time, it wasn't entirely clear to me if this was purely a Sandberg thing, or if it was a decision by the wider Facebook executive team that they had to support FOSTA as a fruitless attempt to appear willing to compromise on something after getting beat up from all sides over its role in Russian disinformation campaigns.

The original NY Times piece briefly mentions the FOSTA situation (referring to the bill's earlier SESTA name), suggesting that the decision here might have been driven by the smear merchant, Definers, angling for "positive content" about the company:

Definers had established a Silicon Valley outpost earlier that year, led by Tim Miller, a former spokesman for Jeb Bush who preached the virtues of campaign-style opposition research. For tech firms, he argued in one interview, a goal should be to “have positive content pushed out about your company and negative content that’s being pushed out about your competitor.”

Facebook quickly adopted that strategy. In November 2017, the social network came out in favor of a bill called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, which made internet companies responsible for sex trafficking ads on their sites.

Google and others had fought the bill for months, worrying it would set a cumbersome precedent. But the sex trafficking bill was championed by Senator John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota who had pummeled Facebook over accusations that it censored conservative content, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and senior commerce committee member who was a frequent critic of Facebook.

Facebook broke ranks with other tech companies, hoping the move would help repair relations on both sides of the aisle, said two congressional staffers and three tech industry officials.

However, in a more recent article from Bloomberg, talking about how many within Facebook feel that Sandberg has repeatedly made decisions based on her own political standing, rather than Facebook's, the claim appears that Sandberg herself made the decision to go against the rest of Facebook's policy position on this one:

Sandberg has at times focused on her own priorities over Facebook’s, the current and former employees also said. The COO is proactive when thinking about interpersonal relationships and messaging campaigns. Each winter, before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, her team prepares a binder of all the people she might meet and what they might ask her. She uses this tactic throughout the year. But that kind of analysis — of what might occur before it happens — wasn’t as thoroughly applied to assessing risks to Facebook and how the company might be run differently, the employees said.

Around the same time Sandberg made the trip to D.C. in October 2017, Facebook and the broader technology industry were preparing for a battle over an important piece of legislation. The bill, meant to address child sex trafficking, also increased internet companies’ liability for content users posted on their services. Facebook’s policy team argued against the law. But then Sandberg got involved. After she was personally lobbied by women in Washington, she decided Facebook should support the legislation, according to people familiar with the matter. The surprise shift crippled the industry’s united front, and the bill passed.

The episode prompted questions among some Facebook staff over whether Sandberg was putting her own politics and relationships ahead of what was best for the company, according to two of the people.

That appears to be Facebook policy people telling the world that they knew that FOSTA would be terrible for Facebook and the wider internet, but Sandberg decided to support it... and got what she wanted.

And, of course, this also gives weight to the rumor I heard from multiple smaller tech companies, who believed that Facebook changed its position because it would harm them relative to Facebook. I specifically heard execs say they believed Facebook did this because "Facebook can handle the liability of FOSTA, but most of its competitors cannot." Or, as the head of Definers apparently believed, a good political move is to do something that damages your competitors...

While this is perhaps not out of the ordinary, it's quite disappointing and incredible that Sandberg's personal priorities may have been a key factor in passing a terrible bill that has already put lives in danger, free speech at risk, and harmed many internet companies through increased liability (including Facebook).

from the maybe-rethink-that-support,-sheryl dept

Facebook -- and Sheryl Sandberg in particular -- have been the most vocal supporters of SESTA. Sandberg wrote a bizarre Facebook post supporting the horrible SESTA/FOSTA Frankenstein bill the day it was voted on in the House. In it, she wrote:

I care deeply about this issue and I’m so thankful to all the advocates who are fighting tirelessly to make sure we put a stop to trafficking while helping victims get the support they need. Facebook is committed to working with them and with legislators in the House and Senate as the process moves forward to make sure we pass meaningful and strong legislation to stop sex trafficking.

Which is weird, given that the bill does nothing to actually stop sex trafficking, but it does place potentially criminal liability on any internet site that knowingly facilitates sex trafficking. Like... say... Facebook. You see, last week, there was a bit of a kerfuffle when Facebook suddenly started pushing horrific child abuse videos on its users.

The social network’s search suggestions, which are supposed to automatically offer the most popular search terms to users, apparently broke around 4am in the UK, and started to suggest unpleasant results for those who typed in “video of”.

Multipleusersposted examples on Twitter, with the site proposing searches including “video of girl sucking dick under water”, “videos of sexuals” and “video of little girl giving oral”. Others reported similar results in other languages.

While Facebook has since apologized for this and claimed that it is committed to taking down such content, how hard would it be for someone to make a case that the company had just engaged in pushing child pornography on unsuspecting users, and there could be a credible claim that many of the videos involved victims of sex trafficking.

And, of course, this comes right after another possibly SESTA-violating fiasco at Facebook in which the company sent out a survey about whether the site should allow adult men to ask for sexual pictures of teenaged girls. No, really.

On Sunday, the social network ran a survey for some users asking how they thought the company should handle grooming behaviour. “There are a wide range of topics and behaviours that appear on Facebook,” one question began. “In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook’s policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures.”

The options available to respondents ranged from “this content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it” to “this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it”.

A second question asked who should decide the rules around whether or not the adult man should be allowed to ask for such pictures on Facebook. Options available included “Facebook users decide the rules by voting and tell Facebook” and “Facebook decides the rules on its own”.

After this became public and people called it out, Facebook also claimed that this was "an error," but it seems like it wouldn't take a genius lawyer or prosecutor to argue that the company choosing to send out just such a survey shows it facilitating sex trafficking. I mean, it was directly asking if it should allow for the sort of activity directly involved in grooming victims for sex trafficking.

Oh, and remember, that even while this is blatantly unconstitutional, SESTA says the law applies retroactively -- meaning that even though all of this happened prior to SESTA becoming law, Facebook is potentially still quite guilty of violating the poorly drafted criminal law it is loudly supporting.

from the disappointing dept

Earlier today, the Senate Commerce Committee had its markup on SESTA -- the deeply flawed bill that claims to be about stopping sex trafficking, but which will do little on that front. Instead, it will create massive problems for lots and lots of small internet sites. The bill sailed through the markup, getting approved via a voice vote with no discussion or debate. As expected, last week's decision by the Internet Association -- the trade group representing all of the large internet companies -- ensured that the bill would sail through the markup. Supporters of the bill are now wrongly insisting that "tech" now supports the bill.

I care deeply about ending the suffering that comes from sex trafficking and sexual exploitation on the internet – and we at Facebook are committed to fighting it every way we can. That’s why we’re grateful that members of Congress have reached an agreement on the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. This important piece of legislation allows platforms to fight sex trafficking while giving victims the chance to seek justice against companies that don’t.

Thank you to lawmakers in both parties – particularly Senators Portman and Blumenthal – and to the dedicated anti-trafficking advocates for all their hard work. As this moves through the Senate and the House, we’re here to support it – and to make sure that the internet becomes a safer place for all vulnerable girls, children, women, and men who deserve to be protected.

Lots of us care deeply about ending the suffering from sex trafficking. As we've discussed repeatedly, it's a horrible, horrible crime. But, there is nothing in SESTA that targets ending sex trafficking. Its sole focus is on punishing the tools that sex traffickers use, in the bizarre and misguided belief that criminalizing the tools will somehow stop the traffickers. There is no evidence to support this. There is plenty of evidence that traffickers will just move around to other services -- and some of those services are even less likely to be willing to work with law enforcement to track down actual traffickers. The whole approach behind SESTA is to try to bury the problem instead of deal with the actual problems of sex trafficking. We just wrote about a recent study showing how pushing this activity away from sites where it can be tracked puts the victims of sex trafficking at MORE risk.

Sandberg's support, then, is doubly troubling. SESTA will cause more harm to victims of sex trafficking, while at the same time cementing Facebook's dominant position, by putting smaller companies at significant risk. The cynical among you may suggest this latter part explains Facebook's decision here, though I'd argue that's almost certainly not true. It's much more likely that with all the criticism Facebook has been receiving lately over supposed Russian interference, it had to "give up" something, and it's easy to toe the misleading line that all of the politicians are following by saying this bill is about sex trafficking and it will magically help end sex trafficking. The fact that it may harm smaller sites and Facebook's own users? That's just gravy.

Yesterday I asked if the authors of SESTA, Senators Blumenthal and Portman, could explain to smaller sites like ours how to stay on the right side of the law. Now I'd like to make a similar ask of Facebook: considering its support of SESTA is what allowed it to sail through the markup this morning, will Facebook commit to funding the defense of small sites that face legal jeopardy because of SESTA? Will Facebook commit to creating a fund to pay for lawyers to help smaller sites comply with SESTA? Will Facebook commit to funding defense of bogus grandstanding attacks by state AGs using SESTA?

Facebook's support of SESTA may be a political necessity for the company, but it will make things worse of victims of sex trafficking and for tons of non-Facebook companies on the internet.